Color Zen is a puzzle game that I see advertised on the Nintendo Switch's news posting every couple of weeks or so when they talk about free-to-play games (you know, along with Fortnite, Apex Legends, Arena of Valor, Warframe, and Rogue Company). This is the exact opposite of every one of those titles. Color Zen is a logic color-based puzzle game where you move geometric shapes around in a contained space creating colors and eliminating others until only one remain. Now before I show the video below, I should say that you can only move the shapes that are bouncing along with the music, and that if you move a color into a black shape, it removes that colored shape and the black color.
So these are three of the early stages in Color Zen:
This free-to-play version is made up of four different themes, with each theme having between 10 - 20 stages to play with additional stages in each theme able to be purchased through the eShop. Maybe because I am cheap, or mainly because after finishing 40 levels in this game, I feel completely satisfied, so I have not seen what else there is to offer in the way of color-based puzzles.
That should not be a deterrent though. This game is fairly relaxing, even when I got frustrated in trying to figure out the correct order to have the blocks knock into each other. There was even one level that I had given up on because I could not figure it out, even after watching a tutorial on YouTube, but then I had forgotten that when shapes have a dotted white line around them, if you double click them, they become immovable but also do not disappear (absorbed) if their color fills the screen. And then there are stages that I managed to complete but was not sure what exactly I did (which is why I saved the video).
One of the things that I love about this game is how the beginning of each of the stages looks like something that could be hanging in the Museum of Modern Art next to the Piet Mondrian exhibit, not that I am a connoisseur of modern art, but I appreciate that the game feels like you are able to interact with and modify an existing work of art.
There are times however when one level transitions into the new level that I have become overwhelmed. Like the stage above, because there are a lot of elements that it can become confusing to know where to even start, knowing that by the end, you have to have the entire screen be that same shade of teal-green so you know you are going to have to save that ball in the lower right-hand corner. See, you have already started the planning process. Also figuring out how many black or white objects you have to work with as well as the number of objects of a specific color can help you determine if you need to get rid of one of them with the black circles or if they might clear out when the rest of the background changes color.
But again, with everything that I enjoyed about the game, I think I am good with the 40 playable levels. It is a bit of a turn-off that levels are packaged with their respective themes as opposed to buying multiple levels from multiple themes in one bulk package. Maybe if the levels were not grouped individually I might be more inclined to throw money at the publisher and developer after spending about 4 hours playing. Although, the packs are each less than $1.00, and there are between 100 - 120 additional levels. . . which then feels almost more daunting. I guess we will just have to wait and see if there ends up being another article for Color Zen covering Serenity or Nature modes in the future.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Pulses Glow from their Homes
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